Frank De Stefano, David Dench, Graeme Hoy: Victoria’s white collar crooks revealed
They can be professional and intelligent people but they’re also experts at deceiving and lying. Meet Victoria’s most shocking white collar criminals.
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Most people think they know what a criminal looks like.
But sometimes crooks don’t fit the stereotype.
They can be professional, intelligent and successful.
Even experts say this certain type of offender often does not believe they’re criminals.
Enter the white collar criminal.
Professor Fiona Haines is an honorary professorial fellow at the University of Melbourne and has been working in and researching white collar crime for 32 years. She says it is an area of law that has both a “legal side” and a “moral side”.
“If you take a legal definition it is all about whether a person complied with their legal obligations,” she said.
“That’s where morality comes in. A lot of discussion about white collar crime is people getting upset and angry saying that if something is not illegal it should be and then fighting to have laws changed.”
According to Prof Haines says white collar crime can be driven by entitlement or believing the good outweighs the bad.
“There is a sense among people in white collar crime that they aren’t really criminals,” she said.
She added: “You might be a middle manager or a senior manager in a company and you might have conflicting pressures on you like, make the company money but don’t break the law and those two might not add up so then you have to choose are you going to make the company money or are you going to comply with the law?” she said.
“And there are a wide range of legal obligations so it might not always be straightforward to comply with all of them, they are very important but it’s not easy.”
Here are Victoria’s white collar criminals.
Frank De Stefano
Frank De Stefano operated an accountancy business in Geelong for more than 20 years and was mayor for 10 years before he was jailed after he embezzled money.
He was jailed for a maximum 10 years with a minimum of seven in 2003 after he pleaded guilty to 12 counts of theft totalling a huge $8.6 million. The court heard he embezzled money from his accountancy clients and blew most of it at Crown casino.
He served seven years of a maximum 10 years jail sentence and in 2009 he was released from prison and served the rest of his sentence in home detention.
The money he embezzled was primarily used to fund his gambling but he also used the money for renovations on his Eastern Beach mansion, school fees and donations to the Liberal Party.
He confessed to his crimes in 2000, and was charged with 12 counts of theft from clients of his firm – the most heinous a near $5 million from a trust set up to manage the affairs of quadriplegic Tomislav Papic. The family did not see a cent, and Mr Papic died in 2001.
De Stefano had been awarded an OAM for service to ethnic communities, but handed back the honour before it was formally rescinded in 2013.
In 2010 he apologised for his crimes.
David Dench
David Dench, 71, is a former Australian rules footballer who was jailed for four months over his minor role in a scheme to defraud Victoria University out of millions of dollars.
He was found guilty of nine counts of obtaining property by deception and two of aiding and abetting the receipt of a secret commission.
Dench played starring roles at full-back for North Melbourne in the 1975 and ‘77 premierships.
He played 275 games for the Roos and was inducted into the AFL Hall of Fame in 2000.
The court heard Dench was a latecomer to the sophisticated scam, which involved a conspiracy by Victoria University directors and maintenance company owners.
The university was provided with false quotes to make it appear that companies owned by John Mario Cappellin were undercutting competitors for available work.
On other occasions work billed was never carried out, or was done at inflated prices.
The jury was told the work included plumbing, electrics, garden maintenance and cleaning of grease traps.
Brian Quinn
Brian Quinn was an Australian businessman who was jailed in 1997 for fraud.
Quinn was a store manager in the ‘60s and was the first executive chairman of the merged Coles Myer retail giant.
He was involved with Solomon Lew in the controversial Yannon share transaction in the ‘90s in which Lew was absolved but Quinn was accused of helping organise a secret underwriting of the share transaction which cost Coles Myer $18 million.
In 1997, Quinn was charged with fraud after spending almost $4.5 million of shareholder funds on renovations to his mansion home in Templestowe. Quinn was found guilty and spent time in jail.
Quinn was stripped of his appointment as an Officer in the Order of Australia and later died.
Belle Gibson
Known as the great “insta-con artist” Belle Gibson used her Instagram platform to convince followers she beat brain cancer through healthy eating.
The founder of The Whole Pantry built a strong following on social media as she shared her battle with cancer — which turned out to be a lie.
Thousands of cancer sufferers across Australia were outraged when wellness blogger Belle Gibson was exposed as a fraud.
In 2017, the Melbourne mother was found guilty of five breaches of the consumer law over her health and wellness empire’s dealings.
The Victorian sheriff’s office executed a warrant on Gibson’s Northcote home in January as the stand-off continued over her refusal to pay a fine of more than $500,000.
She was fined for faking terminal brain cancer to make a profit by duping Australians into believing she cured her condition with healthy eating.
Her business earned more than $578,000 from more than 300,000 purchases before cracks in her story started to appear.
Norman John Graham
Norman John Graham, 62, is a former Geelong stock broker, who had his reputation damaged after he was convicted of insider trading.
Graham pleaded guilty to two counts of insider trading in May 2013, admitting he sold two clients’ shares in the publicly listed Clean Seas Tuna shortly before the company’s share price plummeted because he had confidential information.
The Barwon Heads stockbroker provided advice to Clean Sea Tuna and managed their trading account.
He also had clients who owned shares in the agricultural company and held around 150,000 shares himself.
On February 25, 2010, the eve of an ASX market announcement representing bad news for the company and their share price, Graham sought information from then Clean Sea Tuna CEO Clifford Ashby.
Mr Ashby told him the young blue-fin tuna in the company’s much-anticipated breeding program had died and the company had lost more than $10 million in the first half of the financial year.
He told Graham this on the understanding it was “behind the Chinese Wall” – a corporate information barrier designed to avoid conflicts of interest – the court heard this morning.
He ordered the sale of 200,000 shares in Clean Seas Tuna the next morning before the announcement, which saw the company’s share price plummet from 22 cents to 9.1 cents by close of trading.
He was convicted and fined $30,000 in 2013.
Bill Jordanou and Robert Zaia
Bill Jordanou and Robert Zaia, a professional poker player and suburban accountant fraudulentley obtained millions over four years.
Jordanou, 64, pleaded guilty in 2018 to two charges of conspiracy to defraud after fraudulently obtaining $58 million from the Commonwealth Bank in loans using false documents between 2010 and 2014.
He also scammed $18 million out of Westpac, Bank of Queensland, La Trobe Financial Services, Rhino Money and Mercedes-Benz Financial Services using the same “modus operandi”.
Jordanou, along with accountants Robert Zaia and Scott Arthur, falsified documents to the Commonwealth Bank “for the purpose of obtaining 23 separate loans on behalf of clients”.
Jordanou was sentenced to 12 years’ imprisonment with a non-parole period of nine years. Zaia pleaded guilty to similar charges and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Graeme Hoy
Graeme Hoy co-founded the Chartwell Enterprise operation which employed 40 market analysts in a large office on Ryrie Street in Geelong. It traded investor funds on local and global financial markets, and promised incredible returns of up to 70 per cent.
But the money Hoy received was not invested but was used to pay interest to existing investors.
In 2011 Hoy was sentenced to 13 years in jail for stealing millions from investors. Initially he was hit with more than 200 criminal charges and Hoy eventually pleaded guilty to 47 charges of deception for ripping off $16 million from investors.
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